WebSitePulse summarizes the results from the 2006 Online Retail Performance and Uptime Report

For a second consecutive year, WebSitePulse measured the response time and the availability of the top 10 most popular online shopping destinations in the period between Thanksgiving and the end of the year.

Even though most of the leading online retailers offered uninterrupted and consistently reliable web services during this record-breaking Holiday Season, some of them experienced serious website performance and website uptime problems:
- On Black Friday, the response time for a typical web transaction of Walmart.com reached critical levels 6-7 times higher than its regular values. This resulted in interruption of the daily e-business activities of Walmart for about 10 hours;
- On December 13, Walmart.com web servers were under heavy pressure from online buyers related to the increased demand for the Elmo doll. WebSitePulse first detected the error at 12:00 pm. The Walmart website was fully functional again at 12:52 pm;
- BestBuy.com was unavailable for online Customers on December 14, 15, and 16 for an estimated total of more than ten hours;
- Sears.com struggled with website availability problems on December 22 for approximately four hours;
- Sears.com and BestBuy.com finished last in the 2005 Holiday Season Report, as well, with 99.27% and 98.99% of website uptime respectively. A typical Daily Average Uptime for the entire Group is 99.9%.